Monthly Archives: October 2010

On the campaign trail, one of President Obama’s favorite speech lines has been about Republicans driving the economy into the ditch. He claims to have spent two years trying to get us back out of that ditch, but makes certain that his audience understands that the Democrats did not put us there.

President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress seriously misdiagnosed the politics of health care reform. Yet their malpractice is even more extensive than generally known.Polling consistently shows that opposition to the new law outstrips support. Rasmussen’s tracking surveys regularly demonstrate significant majorities want it repealed. And not a week goes by without more dire projections of health insurance premium increasing and employers dropping or changing coverage.

One of the very few things about being me is that I get calls from pretty smart reporters asking me what I think about this or that.

Sitting at the Atlanta airport yesterday afternoon, I got such a call from a reporter for the Daily Beast asking me to compare Sarah Palin’s appearances in the run-up to Tuesday’s elections with those of Mitt Romney.

The Democratic/liberal narrative for what is about to happen in the mid-term election next Tuesday is becoming clearer.

First, President Obama and the Democrats attempted not only to do good things, but to reach across the aisle and get Republican support for these wonderful ideas (stimulus package, healthcare reform, cap and trade, etc.). Republicans, however, refused to cooperate and. cynically, opposed everything. Never mind that Democrats hardly proved themselves to be the models of cooperation when they were in the minority. That would confuse the narrative.

This summer I was convinced that in September, the Democrats would launch an election-year counter-offensive, an October surprise that would plug the drain of Democratic polling numbers and slow the slide of a lot of Democratic candidates.

If the polls are right–and they are remarkably consistent–Democrats will take a drubbing next week, likely losing control of the House and barely holding on to their majority in the Senate. It is possible that such a powerful repudiation will cause them to engage in some serious soul searching and consider whether they have taken the country in a direction the people (it’s their country, after all) don’t want to go.

Here is an article I wrote in May of 2009 that I thought you would all find of interest:

(CNN) – “It is important for us to have a strong Republican Party,” Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tauntingly told a press conference on April 23. “And I hope that the next generation will take back the Republican Party for the Grand Old Party that it used to be.”

Benonia Brown immigrated to the United States from Europe and settled in Southhampton, MA somewhere around 1800. He and his wife, Sibbel, moved to Ohio and Benonia enlisted in the First Regiment of the Ohio Militia to fight for this country in the War of 1812. He was my great, great, great-grandfather. I bring up Grandpa Brown for the benefit of Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is terribly confused about who is and who isn’t a new American.

Reprinted from weeklystandard.com
Around the 1964 presidential election–back when “Mad Man” Don Draper was still smoking Camels–men and women began to gradually diverge in their political views and behavior. We call this the “gender gap.”

If you are solely disappointed that the Obama $787 billion economic stimulus package has not worked to create millions of new jobs, here’s a $1 trillion economic stimulus program that is guaranteed to work.

Except that this time, it would have zero impact on reducing federal tax revenues, increasing deficits and the national debt and it would all be done by the ‘private sector’, not the public sector.

In 2011, the two major legislative initiatives of the Tea Party Congress (pray the voters deliver such a Congress) will be to get a grip on the deficit and to begin to reverse the intrusion of the federal government in American lives and business.

Getting out of Washington, talking to people who are not consumed by politics, and reading local newspapers that either have a different slant on politics or no slant at all, well, is refreshing.

Today, I’m perusing the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in a sun-drenched room in Eden Prairie that offers a panoramic view of tall trees, mostly maple and oak, and autumn leaves turning colors about two weeks ahead of their brethren along the Potomac. The sun is so bright, it shines right through the leaves, giving them a translucent glow. But I digress.

Reprinted from Weeklystandard.com
Last week’s anemic jobs report came as a sobering reminder that America’s economic malaise shows little sign of slowing. Overall non-farm payrolls shrunk by 95,000 in September, while private sector hiring decelerated for the third consecutive month. High unemployment is now an acute national headache that won’t go away.

When you follow politics, it is easy to become consumed by all of the charges and countercharges, accusations, innuendo, name-calling and character assassinations that dominate the headlines.

The challenge is to sort out what in the political theater has broader meaning or a lesson worth learning. President Obama’s insinuation that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is injecting foreign funds into American campaigns offers a little of both.

Several years ago Congress authorized an earmark of $223 million in tax dollars to build a bridge in Alaska from the mainland to a practically uninhabited island. The bridge funding caught national attention and public ire. It became the “bridge to nowhere” and the iconic symbol of government waste. It rekindled a campaign that may result in the demise of the earmarking process.